He steps aside, murmuring something about not being responsible for our safety. Poor guy. He’s trying to do his job, but he no longer knows what his job is.

* * * * *

I snap Offspring #2 into her car seat. Ariel sits in the back with his younger sister. He is pale with fear and confusion. I touch his arm and murmur: “Everything is going to be fine.”

Ariel gives a weak smile and nods his head.

Our children trust us to protect them.

The burden of parenthood has never felt more grave.

Starting up the engine, I realize I am drenched in sweat. My shirt clings to my body. Karen reaches into the glove compartment and pulls out the Thomas Guide to Los Angeles. “We may have to find a different route home,” she says.

“Right.”

As we cruise up the ramp, my breath catches in my throat, for there are a dozen rioters milling about the exit.

Am I going to be able to put pedal to metal and smash through a bunch of real live human bodies?

A friend of mine, a heroic Israeli tank commander, told me that in the first few days of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, both fronts, the Sinai and the Golan Heights, were so weakly defended that had the Egyptian or Syrian high command been strategically bolder, tactically smarter, and their soldiers braver… well, the Arab armies could have achieved massive breakthroughs, and Israel would have found itself facing genocide.

But small pockets of brave, determined, and well-trained Israeli troops held their ground and attacked enemy forces sometimes a hundred times their strength.

All this whips through my mind as I aim our car – I’m already thinking of the Lexus as a tank, a Centurion – toward the exit of the parking garage. A knot of rioters is milling about at the exit. It’s hard to see clearly, but oh, boy – it looks like a few of them are brandishing baseball bats.

I’m going to make a wild guess and assume they’re not Little League dads.

I haven’t turned on the car’s headlights. We’re still lurking in the shadows, not yet detected by the barbarians.

I inch the car forward, gain speed, 4 mph, 7 mph…

Now: I switch on the headlights using – surprise! – hi-beams, drenching the marauders in white light. I lean on the horn and the rioters are drenched in the powerful lights and the shrieking horn is amplified by the concrete garage walls.

The knuckleheads are blinded, frozen as I bear down on them at what seems like Formula One speed, and now they fall back like bowling pins – and we blow right past them, making a sharp left turn. We’re ordered by a street sign to turn right, but that would deliver us to the front of the DGA building and directly into the eye of the mob, and so, tires screeching, we race away from the theater.

I zoom down the block, pull over, and gulp oxygen.

“You okay?” Karen asks.

I nod. But my heart is slamming in my chest.

As we cruise through the chaotic streets, we spot fires burning all over the city. A canopy of red and orange spreads through the velvety darkness. It takes me a moment to recognize the distinctive signature of Molotov cocktails.

About the Author:Robert J. Avrech is an Emmy Award-winning Hollywood screenwriter and producer. Among his numerous credits are "A Stranger Among Us” and "The Devil's Arithmetic.” His novel "The Hebrew Kid and the Apache Maiden" won the 2006 Ben Franklin Award for Best First Novel and the Association of Jewish Libraries Award for Notable Children's Book of Jewish Content. His most recent book is a memoir, “How I Married Karen,” an eBook available at Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Noble, which Avrech is now developing as a major motion picture. His website is Seraphic Secret (seraphicpress.com).

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As the daughter of survivors my antennae are on constant alert, looking for the warning signals that were tragically ignored by the kind people who refused to believe the horrors the unkind could inflict. Thank you for alerting us to to a powerful new danger.

With the debate over gun control at fever pitch following the atrocity in Newtown, Connecticut, I thought readers of The Jewish Press would find the following account of my experience during the Los Angeles riots of 1992 both timely and interesting.

Five years ago, 26-year-old Moshe Hammer, z”l, a Lubavitch artist who frequently worked through the night, stepped outside for a walk in Los Angeles, to clear his head and recharge his creative batteries. As was his custom, Moshe rambled miles from his apartment in the Fairfax district.

There is no question in my mind that so-called anti-Zionism serves as a fig leaf for Jew-hatred.

There is no other explanation.

I know of no other country whose legitimacy is as relentlessly questioned and undermined as is Israel’s. You would think that those who espouse the love of human rights and rejection of violence and government oppression would attack, with proper fury, countries like Congo, Sudan, Jordan, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Cuba, Libya, Dubai, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Venezuela, and of course the most repressive country on the planet, North Korea.

Until 1967, Gaza was part of Egypt. The Arabs who lived in Gaza considered themselves – get this – Egyptians. The Muslim Brotherhood was active and quite popular in Gaza – and outlawed by the Egyptian government.